How a Household Canine Helped Clear up His Proprietor’s Homicide

The 2023 homicide of an Idaho girl was solved with the assistance of an unlikely supply: the sufferer’s canine.

Mandy Rose Reynolds, 26, was discovered burning and “lifeless past recognition” in April 2023 by authorities responding to a brush hearth in Robinson, Texas, in response to the McLennan County District Legal professional’s Workplace. 

Her cousin, 29-year-old Derek Daigneault, was sentenced to life in jail on Thursday, Nov. 7, for her homicide, the DA’s workplace stated in a launch final week. 

The investigation started on April 5, 2023, after police discovered Reynolds’ physique, initially unrecognizable, burning in a area subsequent to a white canine that “barked frantically at officers and refused to depart the realm of the physique, but in addition refused to permit police to seize it,” in response to the DA’s press launch. 

The subsequent day, the canine was nonetheless on the location after the physique had been eliminated, when a citizen notified animal management who tracked the canine’s proprietor by means of a chip on him. Police had been then tipped off that the corpse possible belonged to Reynolds and discovered the canine’s identify is Titan.

This info led police to Reynolds’ residence, the place they discovered all her belongings lacking and her residence fully empty, the DA’s workplace stated. The sufferer’s automobile was additionally lacking, prompting police to run her car info on a license plate database. They decided that the automobile was in Wichita, Kan. 

Wichita police, upon being notified in regards to the car, noticed Reynolds’ automobile on April 8, 2023, and encountered Daigneault, per the DA’s workplace. He fled the scene on foot and hid on a shelf in a grocery retailer the place he was caught, police stated.

Investigators found a handgun contained in the automobile which matched the shell casing discovered contained in the container the place police say Reynolds’ physique was burned. 

In the meantime, Walmart safety footage obtained by police in San Marcos, Texas, confirmed the killer shopping for a plastic storage container — “equivalent” to the one Reynolds was later present in, a shovel and a gasoline can the day earlier than Reynolds’ physique was discovered. The footage additionally captured Titan together with his head protruding Reynolds’ automobile window, police say. 

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In a GoFundMe arrange after her homicide, Reynolds’ mom stated the sufferer had moved from Idaho to San Marcos and was eager about beginning faculty earlier than the homicide. Daigneault reached out to Reynolds, her mom says, underneath “false pretenses.” 

This “resulted in Mandy touring to Kansas to deliver Derek to Texas for a quick go to,” her mom, Karleen Hardy, wrote within the fundraiser. 

Additional particulars surrounding the circumstances of the homicide, akin to motive, weren’t revealed.